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Famous suffragettes

Millicent Fawcett (1847 - 1929)

Born
Millicent Garret in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, she was married (1867)
to Henry Fawcett (1833–1884, a blind British statesman
and economist, who also campaigned for women’s suffrage).

The focus of her work was to improve women’s opportunities
for higher education. In 1871 she co-founded
Newnham College, Cambridge.

In 1897 Millicent Fawcett founded the "National
Union of Women's Suffrage", which was renamed
in her honour 1953 to the Fawcett
Society and is still working and fighting for
equality between men and women at work, in the home and in
public life.

Millicent Fawcett was a tireless campaigner for women’s
rights, although her fight was quite moderate. She preferred
patience and logical arguments to the militant methods of
her successors. She argued, that if women had to obey the
laws the parliament made, then they should be part of the
process of making those laws and that women should have the
same rights as men since they had to pay the same taxes as
men.....

In 1924 she was made a Dame of the British
Empire.

Emmeline Pankhurst (1858 - 1928)

Born
Emmeline Goulden in ManchesterEngland to abolitionist parents,
she was married (1879) to Dr. Richard Marsden Pankhurst (a
lawyer, comitted socialist, who was already a supporter of
the women's suffrage movement, and had been the author of
the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882).

Emmeline Pankhurst is probably the most famous
figure in the women’s suffragist movement.

In 1889, Mrs Pankhurst co-founded
the "Women's Franchise League",
but her campaign was interrupted by her husband's death in
1898. In 1894 the league won the right for
married women to vote in elections for local offices.

Disappointed about the slow progression in
women’s suffrage, she – together with her daughters
Christabel and Sylvia - 1903 founded her
own movement, the "Women’s Social and Political
Union" (WSPU) in Manchester, an organisation
most famous for its militancy.

The members of her movement were frequently
arrested, using spectacular militant means to further their
cause.

Emmeline Pankhurst herself was imprisoned
several times. In 1912 she went on a hunger strike and was
soon released from jail. 1913 she was again arrested and released
once more after a hunger strike. This procedure repeated itself
12 times in the following 12 months according to the newly
passed “Cat and Mouse Act” (Prisoners,
Temporary Discharge for Health Act) 1913.

At the beginning of World War I, 1914,
the government released all suffragist prisoners and Emmeline
Pankhurst called off the suffrage campaign to support the
war effort. During the war Mrs. Pankhurst continued her campaign
in Canada, the U.S.A. and Russia.

She returned to England in 1926.

Two years later she was chosen as a Conservative candidate
for an East London seat but died before the election to Parliament
took place.

At least she lived to see the release of
the “Representation of the People Act”, establishing
voting equality for men and women in 1928.

A statue in her memory stands at Westminster.

The home of the Pankhurst family in Manchester has now turned
into a museum, the Pankhurst Centre.

Born
in Manchester, Emmeline Pankhurst’s oldest daughter
Christabel was also a suffragist. In 1906 she obtained a law
degree from the university of Manchester.
After World War I she left England and moved to the USA, where
she became an evangelist.

In 1936 Christabel Pankhurst was made a Dame of the British
Empire.

Sylvia Pankhurst (1882 - 1960)

Born
in Manchester, Emmeline Pankhurst’s youngest daughter,
Sylvia Pankhurst, started to work full-time with the WSPU
in 1906. In opposite to her mother and sister Christabel,
Sylvia retained her interest in the labour movement, anti-fascism
and anti-colonialism. She didn’t agree to the WSPU’s
promotion of arson attacks and left the group in 1912
to set up the "East London Federation of Suffragettes"
(ELFS), which changed its name to the "Workers’
Socialist Federation".

Sylvia Pankhurst founded the newspaper “Women’s
Dreadnought” which first appeared on International
Women’s Day on 8th of March 1914. In 1917
the name was changed to “Workers’ Dreadnought”.

Sylvia was an important figure in the communist movement at
the time and attended meetings of the International in Russia
and Amsterdam and also meetings of the Italian Socialist Party.
She argued with Lenin and was supportive of left communists
such as Amadeo Bordiga and Anton Pannekoek.

Sylvia Pankhurst was opposing marriage as
an institution and defending unmarried mothers and stated
her theories by bearing an illegitimate son in 1927.

In 1956 she moved to Addis Ababa and was active in the cause
of Ethiopian independence.

Sylvia Pankhurst died 1960 and was buried in Addis Ababa.

Dr. Elsie Inglis (1864 - 1917)

Born
in India, her parents considered the education of a daughter
as important as that of a son. She trained at the “Edinburgh
School of Medicine for Women” and then at the University
of Glasgow.

While working in London she was appalled by the poor standard
of care of female patients.

In 1894 she returned to Edinburgh and set up a medical practice
and opened a maternity hospital as well as a midwifery resource
centre for the poor. The latter became the Elsie Inglis Memorial
Hospital.

In 1906 she became politically active and
founded the Scottish Women’s Suffragette Federation.

At the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914
Dr. Inglis suggested the creation of women's medical units
on the Western Front but the British government have turned
down the offer of her services. Nevertheless the French government
gladly accepted her offer and she established a hospital fully
staffed by women for use by the French government (Abbaye
de Royaumont hospital with about 200 beds) in 1914. A second
hospital was to follow in 1917.

Her untiring efforts during World War I brought
her fame and Winston Churchill said about her and her colleagues
“they will shine in history”. Her Suffragette
Federation sent teams to France, Salonica, Russia and Serbia,
where she helped reducing typhus and other epidemics by improving
hygiene. In 1917 she was suffering from cancer and died after
returning to Newcastle upon Tyne.